Why did satire become popular in the age of John Dryden and Alexander Pope?pl. ans in detail.

John Dryden (1631-1700)
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Restoration Period (1660-1688)
Augustan Age (1690-1744)

John Dryden and Alexander Pope were Restoration period and Augustan Age poets. The Restoration refers to period of time at which Charles II began his rule of England following the Cromwell's Commonwealth and Protectorate period that ensued after the beheading of Charles I. The Augustan Age, also called the Age of Reason and the Neoclassical Age, refers to a movement of poets who deliberately returned to imitating the Classical Augustan poets Virgil and Horace. It followed the Restoration in c. 1690 and ended with the death of Pope (1744).

The Restoration was a very religious era, nonetheless had a wide variety of kinds of poetry spanning from Milton's religious poem Paradise Lost, written between 1650 and 1660 and published at the beginning of the Restoration in 1667, to the ribald comedy The Country Wife. Literature appeared on the backdrop of philosophical writing calling for humanitarianism and ideals of higher good in government in light of a new understanding of society as such as John Locke wrote about government and Thomas Hobbes wrote about the social contract.

It was also an era of scientific and philosophic investigation, as Locke and Hobbes show, because Charles II encouraged skepticism, philosophy and the examination of nature. Along with valuing an invigorated conversation about new investigations along these lines, he encouraged wit. This milieu was a fertile ground for satire as the aim of satire is to call attention to where society or a group within society is falling sort of an established and valued social moral code while nonetheless giving the show of adhering to it, giving "lip service" to the code.

Satire in the Restoration was a secretive affair. Satirists generally published anonymously because England's defamation laws were very broad and skewed in favor of the claimant. Dryden was beaten more than once for being suspected of having authored anonymous satire. As the spirit of investigation and wit broadened and philosophy more loudly espoused humanitarianism, poets began poking fun at behaviors in society.

By the Augustan Age of Pope, the mock-heroic poem was a popular form that could single out peculiarities in social conduct or in deviations from the accepted moral code and offer a close-up look with a chuckle in its tone. Because these gentle satires poked fun at social idiosyncrasies instead of being political or religious in nature, they side-stepped defamation laws. The primer example is Pope's satirical mock-heroic The Rape of the Lock. Another lively example is The Sofa from The Task by one of my favorites, William Cowper.

[For more information, see English Literature: Resotration Literature and English Literature: Augustan Literature.]